[rescue] looking for IBM System/36 software

[Dave McGuire]

On 03/27/2015 10:28 PM, Jerry Kemp wrote:
> +1
> 
> I suspect that the easiest language to turn up for the S/36 would be RPG
> II.

  Probably.  I'd really like BASIC though, if I can possibly find it.
RPG might already by on there.  I'm just learning my way around the
system; I should be able to find out soon.

> Either way Dave, I am very interested to hear more about your project. 
> Back when I was getting started out, S/34's and S/36's were the first
> real computers I worked on/with.

  Well, I got the machine from its original owner in Florida a few years
ago.  He ran a construction company on it.  Nice old guy.  It's a 5360
with 128KB of main storage, two 30MB hard drives (type 21ED), floppy
juke, two 5291 terminals, and a 5224 printer.  All cabling, boxes and
boxes of disk magazines, hundreds of floppies, all manuals including
service documentation, every scrap of information about the system
including the notes from the IBM salesman who sold it to them.

  I had to crack one of the passwords to get into it, which is a
nontrivial procedure.  I was working on it with a local friend about
three years ago.  Right at the end of the procedure, the +12V supply
dropped out and the machine went dead.  That was depressing.  I dug into
it again a couple of weeks ago with another local friend, Matt Patoray;
we spent quite a lot of time on it, cleaning it up and looking at the
power supply.  Eventually we found a smoked tantalum capacitor on the
CSP storage board that was shorting the +12V supply.  I replaced that,
then another one went up.  After fixing that, the machine is rock solid
and running great.

  Here are some pics of the machine at the time I picked it up:

  http://www.neurotica.com/wiki/IBM_System/36

  I will try to take some more pics of it soon.

              -Dave

-- 
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ/3
New Kensington, PA